For all of his flaws (and they are multitude), you can't really pin that on him. For all of his bluster, he didn't engage in much of the military adventurism that Bush (or even Obama if we're...
Although Donald Trump’s foreign policy occasionally feinted in the direction of isolationism in its rejection of international treaties, protocols, and organizational responsibilities, it still proved itself a direct descendant of the Bush Doctrine.
For all of his flaws (and they are multitude), you can't really pin that on him. For all of his bluster, he didn't engage in much of the military adventurism that Bush (or even Obama if we're being honest) was inclined towards.
He pretty regularly threatened violence, spurred hate, and caused untold suffering in every conflict we were a part of, including a genuinely terrifying number of drone strikes, airstrikes, and...
He pretty regularly threatened violence, spurred hate, and caused untold suffering in every conflict we were a part of, including a genuinely terrifying number of drone strikes, airstrikes, and other aggressions. He also made it easier to do strikes, harder to track the results, and more. He didn't make a big deal about constantly blowing up anything and everything he didn't like, but he definitely did it a lot. He then also failed American allies at literally every step, throwing anyone who wasn't an authoritarian dictator under the bus in favor of his favorite authoritarian "strong men", like Putin and Kim.
This is also one of the spots where Biden has made massive progress. To briefly sum things up from the article I'm about to link: Obama was genuinely awful with drone strikes. They were constant and everywhere. Trump was somehow even worse than that. Biden, on the other hand, in the first 11 months of his presidency, implemented a sweeping array of restrictions and, in varying locations, cut 75 strikes to 10, 18 to 4(?), and 1600 to... Also 4. 1693 in the first 11 months of Trump to 18 in the first 11 months of Biden. Add to that Biden actually doing what Trump promised a dozen different times (he never actually had any intent of doing it- it was purely a trap to fuck over his successor and buy some extra votes, and if you don't believe that, ask yourself why the pullout date was AFTER the election and not before) and getting us out of Afghanistan (which went better than anyone who knew what was going on there genuinely imagined).
I'm wondering why you think the Afghanistan pullout went better than expected? They collapsed as soon as US troops left and a lot of people were surprised by that.
I'm wondering why you think the Afghanistan pullout went better than expected? They collapsed as soon as US troops left and a lot of people were surprised by that.
Only the uninformed were surprised by that. Those who knew what it was like on the ground there had been expecting it to collapse instantly since... Essentially since it started, which is what...
Only the uninformed were surprised by that. Those who knew what it was like on the ground there had been expecting it to collapse instantly since... Essentially since it started, which is what I've heard from literally everyone who's been there, who knew about it, anything. It was a foregone conclusion. There was no other option. There was not a single point in the past two decades during which we could have done any kind of pullout without the taliban immediately and comprehensively sweeping in behind. The attempts at training locals was a farce. The morale of the locals was a joke. The entire thing was a catastrophic mess from the first day Bush put us there. It would have taken two additional decades and an actual effort to improve the place instead of the haphazard, half-assed mess we'd been doing so far to make it anything other than a comprehensive, top-to-bottom failure. Biden wisely decided against pumping trillions more dollars into a failed effort. The collapse isn't his fault- It's Bush's, for putting us there. It's Reagan's, for setting us on this damned path to begin with. It's Trump's, for his cataclysmic "deal", which was all but an unconditional surrender, with him eagerly releasing five thousand prisoners without even talking to the actual Afghan government about his "deal". That's right- Trump made a deal with the Taliban without ever talking to the supposed government of Afghanistan. It's also Obama's fault, too- though I hesitate to put much blame on him. After all, could you imagine the violent, wildly reactionary result of these exact same events happening under his presidency? The man couldn't wear a tan suit without conservative pundits going insane, I don't want to know what the result would've been for the inevitable result of an Afghanistan pullout. But nonetheless, that still leaves blame at his feet.
What actually mattered here was one single question: How many lives can we pull out of there before the end? We'd already, if I remember correctly, been slowly replacing higher-quality gear with older, harder to maintain gear, so every physical thing we left behind? It's probably stopped working by now, as the maintenance costs were genuinely monumental. So what mattered was people.
We got 122,000 people out of there. This included thousands upon thousands of allied Afghans. The airport was practically empty by the time the last plane took off. That was, very seriously, the best it was ever realistically going to get. Everyone who managed to get there got out. There was ONE bombing during the course of events. A tragedy, to be sure, but the fact that it was only a single event is miraculous. Considering the chaos we saw early on, it's a testament to the leadership on the ground and from afar that everything got under control. This was never going to end with some fancy ceremony and smiling faces. But, thanks to competent leadership, it didn't end with a headline about thousands of freshly-dead Americans.
From what I read, the Biden administration was surprised by how fast the collapse happened - they thought they would hold out through winter. Is that not true? Here's an example news story. Also,...
From what I read, the Biden administration was surprised by how fast the collapse happened - they thought they would hold out through winter. Is that not true? Here's an example news story.
Also, I thought the airport was blocked off by the Taliban? If so, the airport being nearly empty doesn't seem like good evidence that everyone who wanted to get out made it.
I'm not going to put myself in the position of being a "Trump apologist" for very long so let me briefly make this point: this was like the only good thing about his presidency. The "foreign...
throwing anyone who wasn't an authoritarian dictator under the bus in favor of his favorite authoritarian "strong men", like Putin and Kim.
I'm not going to put myself in the position of being a "Trump apologist" for very long so let me briefly make this point: this was like the only good thing about his presidency. The "foreign policy intelligentsia" isn't to be thrown out entirely with the proverbial bathwater, but their "isolate Kim" strategy has failed over literally multiple generations of that family now and accomplished roughly nothing. Their influence on both sides of the political spectrum is pervasive ... Probably because a lot of DOD money is tied up with it in various ways... So going against it is... I'd hesitate to say "courageous" but it was at least trying something different.
The issue with the whole thing is that he wasn't interested in improving strategic relations and rescuing the people of downtrodden nations and blah blah blah, no. That had nothing whatsoever to...
The issue with the whole thing is that he wasn't interested in improving strategic relations and rescuing the people of downtrodden nations and blah blah blah, no. That had nothing whatsoever to do with his plans, and his temperamental behaviors changed based on how he felt that day. No, he wanted approval from those he looked up to, and, the most disturbing of all, "friendship" with violent, hateful dictators. He handed over state secrets. He aggressively pushed back at any negative actions towards Russia... Because Russia was supporting his presidency and he has a disturbingly large number of financial ties to Russia. There's a whole string of tweets that read like they were written by a 5 year old who met a new friend named Kim, except they're not written by a 5 year old, they're written by the president of the United States of America. And as soon as he was rebuffed by one of the strongmen, you know what happened? He'd start blustering and threatening and destabilizing the whole world because someone hurt his feelings and didn't treat him like the special boy he thinks he is. He threatened WW3 over nothing. He gets absolutely no credit for anything in terms of international diplomacy from me.
Yeah, to be clear: I'm not implying that any of it was intentional at all. But given the 70 year streak of goose eggs that the "isolate" doctrine has laid, it provides at least a modicum of space...
Yeah, to be clear: I'm not implying that any of it was intentional at all. But given the 70 year streak of goose eggs that the "isolate" doctrine has laid, it provides at least a modicum of space for some kind of strategy that hasn't been a multi-generational abject failure to take root. E.g. if Biden saw some sort of opening for diplomacy with Kim, the seal is broken per se.
This seems to be a review of everything the author doesn't like about the United States, whether it's a sign of collapse or not.
For all of his flaws (and they are multitude), you can't really pin that on him. For all of his bluster, he didn't engage in much of the military adventurism that Bush (or even Obama if we're being honest) was inclined towards.
He pretty regularly threatened violence, spurred hate, and caused untold suffering in every conflict we were a part of, including a genuinely terrifying number of drone strikes, airstrikes, and other aggressions. He also made it easier to do strikes, harder to track the results, and more. He didn't make a big deal about constantly blowing up anything and everything he didn't like, but he definitely did it a lot. He then also failed American allies at literally every step, throwing anyone who wasn't an authoritarian dictator under the bus in favor of his favorite authoritarian "strong men", like Putin and Kim.
This is also one of the spots where Biden has made massive progress. To briefly sum things up from the article I'm about to link: Obama was genuinely awful with drone strikes. They were constant and everywhere. Trump was somehow even worse than that. Biden, on the other hand, in the first 11 months of his presidency, implemented a sweeping array of restrictions and, in varying locations, cut 75 strikes to 10, 18 to 4(?), and 1600 to... Also 4. 1693 in the first 11 months of Trump to 18 in the first 11 months of Biden. Add to that Biden actually doing what Trump promised a dozen different times (he never actually had any intent of doing it- it was purely a trap to fuck over his successor and buy some extra votes, and if you don't believe that, ask yourself why the pullout date was AFTER the election and not before) and getting us out of Afghanistan (which went better than anyone who knew what was going on there genuinely imagined).
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-nearly-ended-drone-war-110110385.html
I'm wondering why you think the Afghanistan pullout went better than expected? They collapsed as soon as US troops left and a lot of people were surprised by that.
Only the uninformed were surprised by that. Those who knew what it was like on the ground there had been expecting it to collapse instantly since... Essentially since it started, which is what I've heard from literally everyone who's been there, who knew about it, anything. It was a foregone conclusion. There was no other option. There was not a single point in the past two decades during which we could have done any kind of pullout without the taliban immediately and comprehensively sweeping in behind. The attempts at training locals was a farce. The morale of the locals was a joke. The entire thing was a catastrophic mess from the first day Bush put us there. It would have taken two additional decades and an actual effort to improve the place instead of the haphazard, half-assed mess we'd been doing so far to make it anything other than a comprehensive, top-to-bottom failure. Biden wisely decided against pumping trillions more dollars into a failed effort. The collapse isn't his fault- It's Bush's, for putting us there. It's Reagan's, for setting us on this damned path to begin with. It's Trump's, for his cataclysmic "deal", which was all but an unconditional surrender, with him eagerly releasing five thousand prisoners without even talking to the actual Afghan government about his "deal". That's right- Trump made a deal with the Taliban without ever talking to the supposed government of Afghanistan. It's also Obama's fault, too- though I hesitate to put much blame on him. After all, could you imagine the violent, wildly reactionary result of these exact same events happening under his presidency? The man couldn't wear a tan suit without conservative pundits going insane, I don't want to know what the result would've been for the inevitable result of an Afghanistan pullout. But nonetheless, that still leaves blame at his feet.
What actually mattered here was one single question: How many lives can we pull out of there before the end? We'd already, if I remember correctly, been slowly replacing higher-quality gear with older, harder to maintain gear, so every physical thing we left behind? It's probably stopped working by now, as the maintenance costs were genuinely monumental. So what mattered was people.
We got 122,000 people out of there. This included thousands upon thousands of allied Afghans. The airport was practically empty by the time the last plane took off. That was, very seriously, the best it was ever realistically going to get. Everyone who managed to get there got out. There was ONE bombing during the course of events. A tragedy, to be sure, but the fact that it was only a single event is miraculous. Considering the chaos we saw early on, it's a testament to the leadership on the ground and from afar that everything got under control. This was never going to end with some fancy ceremony and smiling faces. But, thanks to competent leadership, it didn't end with a headline about thousands of freshly-dead Americans.
From what I read, the Biden administration was surprised by how fast the collapse happened - they thought they would hold out through winter. Is that not true? Here's an example news story.
Also, I thought the airport was blocked off by the Taliban? If so, the airport being nearly empty doesn't seem like good evidence that everyone who wanted to get out made it.
I'm not going to put myself in the position of being a "Trump apologist" for very long so let me briefly make this point: this was like the only good thing about his presidency. The "foreign policy intelligentsia" isn't to be thrown out entirely with the proverbial bathwater, but their "isolate Kim" strategy has failed over literally multiple generations of that family now and accomplished roughly nothing. Their influence on both sides of the political spectrum is pervasive ... Probably because a lot of DOD money is tied up with it in various ways... So going against it is... I'd hesitate to say "courageous" but it was at least trying something different.
The issue with the whole thing is that he wasn't interested in improving strategic relations and rescuing the people of downtrodden nations and blah blah blah, no. That had nothing whatsoever to do with his plans, and his temperamental behaviors changed based on how he felt that day. No, he wanted approval from those he looked up to, and, the most disturbing of all, "friendship" with violent, hateful dictators. He handed over state secrets. He aggressively pushed back at any negative actions towards Russia... Because Russia was supporting his presidency and he has a disturbingly large number of financial ties to Russia. There's a whole string of tweets that read like they were written by a 5 year old who met a new friend named Kim, except they're not written by a 5 year old, they're written by the president of the United States of America. And as soon as he was rebuffed by one of the strongmen, you know what happened? He'd start blustering and threatening and destabilizing the whole world because someone hurt his feelings and didn't treat him like the special boy he thinks he is. He threatened WW3 over nothing. He gets absolutely no credit for anything in terms of international diplomacy from me.
Yeah, to be clear: I'm not implying that any of it was intentional at all. But given the 70 year streak of goose eggs that the "isolate" doctrine has laid, it provides at least a modicum of space for some kind of strategy that hasn't been a multi-generational abject failure to take root. E.g. if Biden saw some sort of opening for diplomacy with Kim, the seal is broken per se.